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This Is What An 'Ultra-Premium' Gin Tastes Like

It takes a brave (and usually ignorant) soul to dare drink gin straight.

The reason: Even the best gins are designed to be pieces of a palate. This isn’t a solo spirit—it’s a team player that’s meant to dance with tonic or vermouth.

So you can understand my hesitation when Desmond Payne, Beefeater’s legendary master distiller (and one of the most dapper gentlemen I’ve ever met), passes me a pour of his new Burrough’s Reserve gin release and tells me to drink up.

But first, I’m told the story: For this limited-run release, Beefeater dusted off a creaky old copper still that was once used by founder James Burroughs more than a century ago. As the company grew and scaled, and started incorporating massive industrial-sized stills, it no longer made any sense to bother with the tiny 268-liter-capacity contraption that gave birth to some the first batches of Beefeater.

And so lonely still #12, as the company calls it, sat unused for decades. A sort of trophy, sitting in a corner of the distillery, gathering dust and serving as more of a museum object than a functional piece of machinery.

“It hadn’t been used for at least 20 years,” Payne told me.

Until now.

As part of his company’s pitch at creating a new category of “ultra-premium” gin, Payne told me he wanted to make the ultimate throwback spirit. Not only would it incorporate James Burrough’s original recipe (a recipe that remains intact with modern Beefeater releases), but it would be made using his original still. And then, a twist: Unlike most gins, which are bottled as clear, unaged spirits, this one would sit in an oak cask, Scotch-style. The goal: Create the rare gin that could be ordered neat. Something that isn’t a mere cocktail component, but a standalone sipper.

To put this notion to the test, I lift the glass to my lips.

The taste is novel. While it’s definitely gin—the junipers and botanicals jump at me and its citrus overtone will be familiar to Beefeater drinkers—the time in oak has mellowed the flavor to something that sits quite comfortably on my tongue. There’s very little burn with this 43% ABV spirit. It’s complex and smooth and all those other cliches folks use to describe alcohol when they really just mean “drinkable”.

As a bit of disclaimer, I’ll put it out there that I’ve always been a straight spirits man. I’ll almost always pick a good whiskey served neat over a cocktail. I simply like the taste of alcohol, and I like the subtleties that come from a spirit that isn’t obscured by syrups or sugars. So I can appreciate this gin’s aim of being a straight sipper.

Now, whether or not it’s worth its hefty price tag (it will likely cost close to $100 a bottle when it comes to the States in October) is entirely a function of how much disposable income you have and how much you value being able to tell cool historical tales while you pour drinks for guests.

You see, I’m a big believer that the only reason to spend huge amounts of money on a bottle of alcohol is so you can wow guests with its origin myth or a some related tale of history. Folks don’t simply buy expensive booze because it tastes better (pro tip: it doesn’t always)—they buy it because it tells other peole something about themselves.

Burrough’s Reserve is certainly a history-oriented beverage, and an experiment in getting people to drink gin a new way. As a limited-run product (this won’t be found at every corner liquor store or dive bar), it can also be viewed as a marketing play from a distillery that thrives off its history as the makers of a really, really old gin. In the end, the chances are much better that you’ll hear or read about this product and its relationship to Beefeater’s greater history (from articles such as this, perhaps), than actually taste it. And one can’t help but think that that’s, at least in part, the goal.

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